


Repetition, with a difference

by rilina



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-17
Updated: 2006-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 08:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilina/pseuds/rilina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ukitake ponders reincarnation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repetition, with a difference

**Author's Note:**

> Mild spoilers for volume 16. This fic is what happens when you ponder _Bleach_'s wacky timelines.__

Ukitake has watched too many shinigami come and go during the centuries his own frail body has clung to one life like a parasite. On the days when his illness asserts itself, sending his loudmouth third seats running for the Fourth Division, Ukitake lies in bed, listening to the water lapping against the dock outside his window, and remembers absent friends. And he wonders if the departed will forgive him for hoping his breathing will grow steady for today, and for tomorrow, and for the day after that. Ukitake isn't ready to leave this life, not quite yet.

He's known many friends twice—a handful of them even more times than that—which means they've suffered through the cycle of death and rebirth more than he wants to contemplate. When they wander back into his life, wearing a new body over their old soul, he wants to scold them for getting themselves killed so often and so quickly, for looking at him with eyes that don't recognize him. They never do realize that they've known him before. Ukitake can't bring himself to enlighten them, and there are few others in Soul Society who have lived long enough and see deeply enough to know old friends the second or third or fourth time around.

Death—or life, perhaps—changes them. Often they return to Soul Society with a very mortal fire burning in their bellies, driven by some regret or injustice from their last life. Some discover previously unsuspected reserves of resolve, of ferocity, of gentleness, of hate. Then there’s Kaien, as Ukitake now thinks of him, who learned to laugh during one incarnation or another. Ukitake's lost him three times now, and each time it's hurt more.

But at least Kaien comes back; those devoured by Hollows never do, though that doesn't stop Ukitake from searching for them in each batch of academy graduates sent over to the Gotei 13.

He confesses this to Kyouraku once, on a night when the sake’s flowed too readily. Ukitake’s never asked what souls have followed Kyouraku over many lifetimes, though he has his guesses.

Alcohol has heated Kyouraku’s cheeks, but nothing in his manner is as dissipated as rumor would have it. “I’d look for you,” he tells Ukitake, then reaches to refill his friend's empty cup.


End file.
